Gameplay overview/Magical Drop III
This article covers the gameplay mechanics of Magical Drop III, particularly the original NeoGeo version. Much of the more intricate details were discovered by Japanese Magical Drop player maruta (Twitter handle atbillerondin), who posted their findings on YouTube. Their video is linked at the end of this article. As the video is in Japanese, this article seeks to cover the video's major points for English-speaking fans. Changes from Magical Drop II Just as Magical Drop II featured several changes from the original Magical Drop, Magical Drop III makes several changes to its immediate predecessor. These changes include: * Normal and special balloons can now be grabbed simultaneously. This is in contrast to II, where special balloons can be matched - but not grabbed - with normal balloons. * The C Button (or equivalent in console ports) drops a row of balloons into the player's field, allowing them to easily ready their field for more chains. * A new balloon type, Color Ice Balloon, is introduced. Unlike normal Ice Balloons, they will always change to a specific color once "thawed". * When an opponent is attacked, balloons fall into their field unevenly, with the specific pattern varying by character. While this means that less balloons overall are pushed into the opponent's field than in II, it has the potential to break the opponent's setups and overall make it more difficult to successfully fend off. * The colors of balloons that are sent into the opponent's field during an attack now utilize two separate character-specific patterns, one containing Ice Ballons and the other lacking them, that are mixed together based on the player's chain. This is in contrast to Magical Drop II, where each character has a single color pattern. * The formula that mixes the aforementioned color patterns has three character-specific variations, meaning that the damage formula is no longer universal. Characters still have "favorite" Special Balloons, despite the character select screen no longer displaying this information. Field Patterns Contrary to what traditional puzzle game wisdom might tell you, there is actually minimal randomness in Magical Drop III. The order in which balloons fill the field normally (as in, without the player being attacked) is determined by a looping 7x64 strip of balloons, starting at a random point and varying only to accommodate the given character's "favorite" Special Balloons. There are several of these preset strips, determined by the mode and progress in said mode. Attacking In Magical Drop (testing pending) and Magical Drop II, a player's attack is determined by taking the score value of their current chain, plugging it into a formula to determine the number of rows, and then pushing rows into the opponent's field based on the attacking character's color pattern. Magical Drop III has much more nuanced attacking mechanics, with several factors coming into play to determine the nature of the player's offense. Attack Formula Instead of strictly using the player's score to determine the player's attack power, the game finds an "Attack Level" based on the player's chain and the number of balloons cleared in the chain. The Attack Level is calculated as follows: * (Balloons cleared - 3) / 4 = Balloon Level (NOTE: The final number is rounded down.) * (Consecutive chain - 1) * 4 = Chain Level * Balloon Lv + Chain Lv = Attack Level For example, creating a 3-chain by clearing 3 sets of four balloons leads to: * (12 cleared balloons - 3) / 4 = Lv2 * (3-chain - 1) * 4 = Lv8 * Lv2 + Lv8 = Attack Lv10 Dual Color Patterns Each character in Magical Drop III has two color patterns: one that consists entirely of normal balloons and one that contains Ice Balloons. The game constructs a single color pattern by taking the player's attack level and applying it to one of three Attack Tables. The Attack Table will determine how many lines are sent, which lines will be pulled from the Normal color pattern, and which lines will be pulled from the Ice Color pattern. While the game is capped at 8 lines per attack, the "quality" of the lines can still be improved by chaining beyond the amount needed for 8 lines. The three Attack Tables are character-specific and vary in power: * The "Low" Attack Table, used by Devil, Lovers, Fool, and Hanged Man. * The "Medium" Attack Table, used by Emperor, Death, Justice, Moon, Magician, Hierophant, and Hermit. * The "High" Attack Table, used by Sun, Star, Chariot, High Priestess, Judgement, Temperance, Father Strength, Daughter Strength, Empress, World, Tower, Wheel of Fortune, and Black Pierrot Carrying on from the above example, we will use a Lv10 attack performed by Star. Based on the High Attack Table, a Lv10 attack has five rows as follows: * Row 1: Normal * Row 2: Ice * Row 3: Normal * Row 4: Ice * Row 5: Normal This will create five rows, with Rows 1,3,5 using the standard color pattern and Rows 2,4 utilizing the Ice Balloon pattern. Every row from the Ice Balloon pattern contains at least one Ice Balloon, though some characters' patterns contain more than others. Tower, Fortune, and Black Pierrot, being bosses, have blatantly overpowered Ice Balloon patterns on top of highly-advantageous normal color patterns. Drop Patterns Unlike previous games, Magical Drop III does not drop even rows into the opponent's field whenever the player attacks. The opponent's columns are instead raised according to character-specific sequences. For example, Empress attacks the opponent's leftmost columns first, World attacks the opponent's rightmost columns first, and Judgement attacks the opponent's middle columns first. Finishing the above example, Star only raises the middle column in the first line that she sends, so the middle column of Row 1 will be pushed into the opponent's field. Her second line contains the middle and third-from-right column, so those two balloons from Row 2 will be pushed into the opponent's field. This continues until five rows have been dropped. External Category:Gameplay